World War Two Will Not Take Place

by Bill James

  ‘You want it kept confidential, even from you, sir?’

  ‘Not that. But let me get there without aid, would you, Andreas? Entirely without aid.’ He pulled off his spectacles for a second, as though they might give him unfair help, enable him to see through mysteries. ‘Please, do allow me to play the detective! It’s a little bêtise of mine.’

  ‘But you are a detective, sir.’

  ‘All the more reason I should be permitted to speculate, then, and to speculate with virtually no prompting, no information, except, that is, what comes from this photograph – which, incidentally, is very much a snatched job and less than fully clear.’ He’d put his glasses back on and stared now at pictures of the man.

  ‘We’ve done a dossier identification from it,’ Valk said.

  ‘And I’m sure you have it right, Andreas. But I want to give the old mental machinery a bit of a run, if you don’t mind. This will be an exam – an exam I have to sit and pass or fail! Now then, what do we get from the picture, imperfect as it may be? Of course, we have some assistance in the report: he’s described as dark-haired, tall, heavily made. The photograph can confirm that much, I concede. But, Andreas, as a challenge – as, indeed, fun – I think I’d like to come at this test from quite another direction. My own method.’

  ‘Fascinating.’

  ‘I’m going to do it in classical, syllogistic style.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Valk said.

  ‘The syllogism. Such a highly disciplined, formally regulated way of getting to the truth – to a conclusion. Aristotle loved a good syllogism.’

  Valk said: ‘He certainly knew what he was about, though many years ago and abroad.’ He made this reaction as inane as he could. He wanted to shout: ‘You posturing, pompous piece of horse shit, Knecht.’ But that might mean not just that Valk would never get higher than major, but he might get a lot lower.

  ‘First thing required is a premise,’ Knecht explained for Valk. ‘A starting assumption. What do you think that is here, Major?’

  ‘That this man is a spy.’

  ‘Correct! Where do we go from there?’

  ‘That he’s a British spy.’

  ‘Correct again! We get ahead, we get ahead. And thereafter?’

  ‘Thereafter, I imagine you—’

  ‘Thereafter I propose this, Andreas – that he almost certainly comes from Stephen Bilson’s outfit, the Section, as it’s tersely, familiarly, known by those who work in it.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How I can be sure this is a Bilson man? Answer: (a) it is a Foreign operation, and Bilson heads aspects of Foreign, though also with Home responsibilities sometimes, if Foreign and Home are inextricably intertwined, as can happen. And (b) Bilson’s focus as a chief of Foreign is at present on Germany and, specifically, Berlin. How can I prove this?’

  He held up a finger, and then, as more points were added, further fingers. ‘One: the general British political climate makes it likely, and (two) Bilson has been seeing that feeble freak, Chamberlain, privately for some time. Chamberlain will obviously be preoccupied with Germany and the Führer. Bilson is not head of the entire British intelligence service, only of his Section. The meetings with Chamberlain are therefore out of line with normal procedure. This does not appear to be a sexual liaison. There is no evidence that either Chamberlain or Bilson is homosexual or bisexual. Goebbels’ people have been looking into that, but without any significant findings to date.

  ‘Finally, (three) Bilson was at Heston to welcome the British Prime Minister back from his meeting with the Führer. This kind of public appearance by Bilson is exceptional. The break with custom might be a sign of something fond between them: he wishes to see Chamberlain safely returned. Or it might be simply that Bilson is interested in anything involving high-level dealings with Germany. Whichever it might be, extreme good luck enabled one of our people to spot him there, at the airport. We keep an eye on a senior member of our London embassy staff, Theodor Kordt, who has shown disapproval of the Führer – flagrantly and continually shown disapproval. For his own reasons, Kordt went to Heston in full morning suit to witness Chamberlain’s departure, and also turned up to greet his return. Our tail on him noticed Bilson present, recognized him from dossier research. He was with what appeared to be a bodyguard or apprentice.

  ‘Now, (a) this bodyguard was not photographed, but the description we have of him tallies with the description in the Mair–Schiff report of the man they followed, and with the pictures they took near his apartment at Steglitz. Therefore, (b) I would propose that the bodyguard-apprentice at Heston and the spy associated with Eisen are one and the same and work for Stephen Bilson. Eisen would have a code sobriquet, of course. Bilson likes to take names from old clockmakers. It is a hobby of his to collect ancient clocks, as we know.

  ‘Happily, (c) we have a reasonably up-to-date personnel list for Bilson’s Section. It tells us what I presume the surveillance pictures from Mair and Schiff tell us, that the British spy is Marcus Delaware Mount, aged twenty-eight. And so, here we have what I humbly propose – subject to correction, of course – the conclusion of our syllogism, Andreas!’

  ‘Bilson was at the Somme,’ Valk replied.

  ‘Yes. As were you, of course, Andreas, but on the other side of no-man’s-land. You a platoon commander, Bilson a sniper, until both of you moved up the ranks: he rather more slowly than you, at first. Two medals, which again is a similarity between you. Odd to think he might have blown your head off if you’d stuck it above the trench parapet one day. We must consider the present, though. Now, a different sort of battling.’

  ‘Yes, we also thought Mount,’ Valk said.

  ‘There are two other men close to Bilson in the Section – Nicholas Baillie and Oliver Fallows, but they don’t fit the photo. Shorter, physically slighter people. Undoubtedly, Mount, I’d say. Mother a widow, houses in Bath Spa and Rome. Marcus brought up in both. Wellington School. Oxford. Greats – Latin, Greek, philosophy, ancient history. A First.’

  ‘He’d know about the syllogisms.’

  ‘Possibly recruited at Oxford,’ Knecht said. ‘Cambridge gathered in students to spy for Russia, Oxford for the king. One of Mount’s tutors was Quentin Impey-Reid, who’d done Intelligence work himself in the war. He might have recommended Mount.’

  ‘We’ve tried to find—’

  ‘Obviously, we will let this run, Andreas.’

  ‘Run? In which respect, sir?’

  ‘Minimum surveillance. In fact, not much more than token.’

  ‘For which?’

  ‘Both – Eisen and Mount.’

  ‘We have them under continuous watch.’

  ‘Pull back at once. And the Foreign Ministry needs to know nothing yet. We can do without Ribbentrop’s nose into things at this point.’

  ‘Pull back? Wait?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Valk said: ‘I might have trouble with those two.’

  ‘Which two? Mount and Eisen?’

  ‘No, sir: Mair, Schiff. The pair you justly admire so much for an array of talents.’

  ‘What trouble?’

  ‘They’ll want to wrap things up, soon make the arrests. It’s their case. Or it’s become their case, because of that skill at improvising you so rightly praised. They’ll be afraid some of our other people might sneak in and steal part of their credit. Yes, as you say, sir, they’ve been admirably careful and unobtrusive so far, but they won’t want to hang back for ever.’

  Knecht went into something between a shout and a hiss. ‘Oh, won’t they? Won’t they? Well, you tell them I’m sneaking in, Andreas.’ Knecht was fat faced and stout bodied. Valk found it hard to think of him sneaking in anywhere. But Knecht said: ‘Tell them the Colonel Commandant is sneaking in, and that if the Colonel Commandant is sneaking in, Heinrich Himmler will know the Colonel Commandant is sneaking in and has good cause for sneaking in. Tell them they’ll have to deal with at least me, and possibly Himmler personally, if they move too soon. O
r if they move at all without my specific orders. My specific orders via you, of course, Andreas. The chain of command will be respected. Certainly. What are they, after all, these two? Minor, ditheringly hesitant makeweights.’ He stood again and made as if wiping his behind with their report. ‘“BLS writes.” “VB writes.” Whom do they think they are? Goethe?’

  Valk said: ‘But, sir, you found their work so—’

  ‘Oh, they did their run-of-the-mill stuff all right. They earn their “Beta-double-plus” –’ this in English and Latin – ‘and I don’t begrudge that. But street-level material. Now we have to consider what these events really mean, in their widest sense, don’t we? The magnitude I referred to.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Knecht threw the report back on to his desk and sat down. He gazed at the picture of Olga. ‘Absolutely sweet, and her friend can supply charming variants,’ he said. ‘Both use quite expensive perfume. These things make all the difference, don’t they? I might go and have another chat with them, and so on.’

  ‘The Toledo – a select sort of place.’

  ‘It seems strange now.’

  ‘What, sir?’

  ‘To be in a way linked to Marcus Mount and/or Eisen, through these girls.’

  ‘But you got there first. Of the three of you, I mean.’

  ‘I want no intrusion, no disturbance of the normal state of things,’ Knecht said. ‘For instance, it troubles me that a woman neighbour of Mount told the police she’d seen two men hanging about outside the Steglitz apartment block for a long period, both bare headed and in long top coats. Part of the time they were on foot, but they also used a car. This woman has been especially vigilant and troubled because more than once pieces of broken chairs have appeared in her refuse bin, not put there by her. She didn’t know whether these items had been deposited by an apartment block resident or by somebody from outside, which is why she has watched the street a great deal lately.

  ‘I hope this does not sound boastful or patronizing, Andreas, but it’s one of my strengths that I understand the feelings of quite ordinary folk, and I can see why pieces of a chair appearing like this would disturb an elderly woman. It’s a circumstance she is not likely to have come upon previously. Repeated bits of broken chair in the wrong bin is outside the normal run of things. What kind of activity or philosophy of life can give rise to broken chairs? It might be explainable if they were old chairs, which had to be replaced. But the woman told the police that this was not the case. The chair pieces had every appearance of very-up-to-dateness. Although these loitering men were not, in fact, carrying pieces of a chair to drop in her bin, nor have any further pieces of broken chair been left there very recently, she found these lurkers frightening just the same. Routinely, all instances of unexplained behaviour are passed on by the city police to us for consideration. Do your people, Mair, Schiff, wear long coats?’

  ‘Is this to do with the missing chair receipt somehow, do you think, sir – the one mentioned in the report? Did the woman say the actual type of modern chair?’

  ‘I’d like you to consider what the Führer’s real view of the Russians is,’ Knecht replied.

  ‘Well, as a prospective ally and non-aggression partner he—’

  ‘He hates them. Of course he hates them. He does not trust them. He sees their leadership as heathen, their ballet as pornographic, Stalin a murderous crook, and Dostoevsky a bathhouse paedophile. He will never countenance a pact with the Soviets.’ He stopped again. ‘No, I withdraw that. He will countenance a pact if that pact seems at the time in Germany’s best, immediate interests. At the time. I stress that. But he will discard it as soon as it becomes a nuisance.’

  ‘But why, then, is he—?’

  ‘He allows this pantomime of visits and discussions to continue because it suits his long-term aim. Long-term aims are what Führers have to take. It is what makes them Führers, Andreas. They see things very large, very clear, very thematic.’

  ‘Which long-term aim?’

  ‘He would not wish us to interrupt the present diplomatic interchanges between Berlin and Moscow, absurd though they may be.’

  ‘Which long-term aim?’

  ‘Oh, he longs for a treaty with the British. He esteems them. I can understand that – Shakespeare, Milton, the cricketer, Dr WG Grace, the spinning jenny. Hitler believes the world should be divided between them and us.’

  ‘But, sir, they behave like a secret, destructive enemy. They send a spy here. He entices, no doubt pays, Konrad Paul Eisen, a Ministry official to betray us. The spy debauches our women, at least one of whom you have previously conferred yourself upon and might revisit in a friendly manner in person.’

  ‘These are routine moves. All countries who can afford it spy on other countries. We don’t want the British to think we’re deeply scared our talks with Moscow will be revealed. That would give more importance to the talks than they actually have. It could lead to the British deciding to attack us now, before they might be faced with a double enemy: Germany plus Russia. They have difficult, warlike voices there – Churchill, Lionel Paterin, Vansittart. Lionel Paterin particularly, in his brutal style, has been making very aggressive speeches lately, three or four. He is in their Cabinet and Defence Cabinet. This is a man of big influence, and big influence not exercised in our favour.

  ‘The Führer wants his State visit to London next Spring. It would help bring him closer to the romantic king, Edward known as David, and therefore to the British people and their government. A king in a democracy is only a king in a democracy, but he has massive pull. That pull is exceptionally massive now he has browbeaten so many high-born figures into accepting his much-travelled Yank woman and letting her live in Buck House, as they call Buckingham Palace in their seemingly self-puncturing way. We will be able to forget Russia. A British–German treaty might soon follow this London jaunt by the Führer, despite the ravings of that drunken lout, Churchill, plus Paterin, Vansittart, Eden, and their noisy, Jew-sponsored clique. A spy hunt and capture here, now, in Berlin? No. The repercussions would make that State visit impossible. Mount and Eisen strung up? How could that help, Andreas? The arrests, trials and toppings would have to be publicized. Not even Goebbels and his Public Enlightenment Ministry could stop that getting out and enlightening. A profound chill would be inevitable between the two countries.’

  Knecht jutted his almost Habsburg jaw, signalling determination to fix a grip on the future. His speech remained intelligible despite this jut. ‘Therefore, the British and their insider, Mount, should be allowed to continue,’ he said. ‘Bilson, and perhaps Chamberlain, probably think that if they prove Germany seeks a secret arrangement with Russia, it will show Munich to be valueless. They possibly regret Munich now, in hindsight – the paltry bit of paper. Suppose we jump on Mount and Eisen, or whatever they call him, it will seem, as I’ve said, that the Berlin–Moscow negotiations are immensely significant and must be kept hidden. It would look as though we rushed to wipe out any possibility of an information leak about our negotiations with Moscow because those negotiations are so vital to us.

  ‘Yes, the contemptible war faction in Britain – Churchill, Lionel Paterin, Vansittart, others – would then find it easier to convince Parliament and the country that now, immediately, is the time to hit us, before we become too powerful, backed by Stalin. Bilson may hope for that, and so might Chamberlain, having lost his belief in Munich. And frankly, Andreas, who could blame him for that? Who would have expected Chamberlain ever to have swallowed the rubbish he was given there? I speak, of course, as between you and me only. Therefore, let the chatter with Moscow continue, as though confidentially. It gives us time and does not endanger the London trip.

  ‘Of course, the Russians know the Führer hopes for a state visit to London, and that he hopes, too, that a lasting alliance with Britain will result. This makes the Moscow–Berlin talks about a non-aggression pact look ridiculous. But Stalin will let them proceed because he needs time to repair the harm
he’s done at the top of the Red Army. Everyone seeks time. The Moscow–Berlin talks are never going to reach fruition, and Mount and Eisen will have to go on telling Bilson, and therefore Chamberlain, that it’s still only an idea, an intent, a fleeting Berlin whim. This would not be enough to convince British public opinion to authorize war.

  ‘Mind you, Andreas, I believe – and others far above believe – that the relief after Munich was so great in Britain, so general, so cross-party, cross-class, cross-newspapers, that it could not now be revisited and rejected, even if our talks with Moscow did get pushed into the open. That would be a gamble, though, and one we do not need to take yet, if at all. Just tell those two labourers in the field, Mair and Schiff, they’ve done very nicely and it’s recognized at distinguished levels, but that matters have now gone beyond chair receipts, and beyond the range and comprehension of industrious nobodies. They should get back into their kennels and await a call for some other dogsbody job. And remove all other surveillance, Andreas. I’ve told the police to ignore the woman’s complaint about men watching the Steglitz apartments.’

  SEVEN

  Marcus Mount saw the result of this order by Knecht, though, of course, he didn’t fully know the thinking behind it. In fact, there had been all sorts of developments over the last thirty-six hours that he hadn’t completely understood. But that was true of so much Section business.

  Sitting alone now at the Toledo club bar, he went over in his head the core events of the last day and a half. He tabulated them in his mind for clarity. He liked tabulating. It made for tidiness. He’d handled problems by this method since childhood.

  He had always greatly liked the look of the Toledo club. It had an instantly obvious degree of what must be termed class, yes, class – that is, compared with some other Berlin clubs, which could be total shitholes. No wonder that cartoonist – Grosz wasn’t it? – satirized these dumps in the 1920s, showing customers as bloated, coarse, sottish, lascivious. One of his collections was called something like The Face of the Ruling Class. Harsh, though probably accurate. Mount thought Grosz emigrated to America just before Hitler took power; but if he’d stayed he could have still found Berlin clubs like that. Not the Toledo, however. Invariably, Mount felt more or less comfortable as soon as he walked in, and did tonight.